1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image display method, a medical diagnostic imaging apparatus, and a medical image processing apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, in order to use medical image data of a patient by a different hospital, medical image data collected by a medical diagnostic imaging apparatus is sometimes recorded on a portable medium, such as a Compact Disc (CD), or a Digital Versatile Disk (DVD), in some cases. Moreover, as well as medical image data, image display application for displaying the medical image data is often recorded on the portable medium. Accordingly, a doctor of a different hospital who receives the portable medium can view the medical image data only with a general purpose terminal device that has a function of reading data from a portable medium. In other words, the general purpose terminal device reads the image display application from a portable medium, starts the application, reads the medical image data stored in the portable medium, and displays the read data.
A portable medium is generally a medium with slow access, so that it takes some time to read data from it. For this reason, conventionally there has been a technology according to which data recorded on a CD is replicated into a magnetic disk in a terminal device in advance, and then the terminal device reads the data recorded on the magnetic disk (for example, JP-A H7-105067 (KOKAI)).
However, according to the conventional technology, there is a problem that it takes a long time until medical image data is displayed, as explained below.
When reading medical image data, the same medical image data is often repeatedly displayed, for example, a plurality of medical image data is viewed, or medical image data of a present examination and a past examination are viewed. When medical image data read from a portable medium into a terminal device is still present on a memory of the terminal device, fast access is available, and a time for repeatedly displaying the same medical image data is short. However, when displaying again medical image data that is once cleared from the memory, the medical image data needs to be read again from the portable medium with slow access, so that it needs some time.
For this reason, although it is conceivable to replicate medical image data recorded on a portable medium into a magnetic disk in a terminal device; in such case, replication itself also takes some time, thereby resulting in a long time until the medical image data is displayed. For example, when a doctor of a different hospital intends to view medical image data recorded on a portable medium while carrying out diagnosis for a patient, the doctor cannot start to view the data instantly.